Ways To Say Goodbye
by vampymistress
Summary: There was a time when Rachel and Quinn did have a relationship. But you've only heard the rumours, never the truth. Now, Rachel is done hiding and keeping the truth buried. After all, the truth will set her free. **not a happy story, but please read**
1. In The Beginning

A/N: The only reason I'm using this material is because people have told me that it would be a good idea for a book. So instead of pushing my deepest secret into the realm of the super public, I've decided the quasi-public, teenage generation would be a better audience. Let's pretend that Rachel lived with Shelby, Beth never existed, and Finchel/Puck x Quinn (What is that, Quick?) also never happened. If I find more discrepancies, I'll let you know.

Chapter 1: In the Beginning

Most people have so many moments where they wish they had a time machine handy. Possibly when they got caught cheating on a test, when they went to a certain party, and that time when they made a fool of themselves in front of a crush. But for me, there's just one: the moment when I poured my heart out and pressed "send". As you very well know, my vocabulary is extensive and even when I find myself speechless I manage to find a way to express that. Many of you see me as a rubber ball: resilient, able to bounce back quickly. Though that may not be the first metaphor you would use to describe me, it's there in the back of your mind. And although I appear to be the epitome of confidence, just oozing a sane calmness from each and every single pore on my body, there is one area in my life that gets me tongue tied every time it manages to be brought up.

Quinn Fabray.

There. I've said it. After months and months of torturous slander and falsefied tales, I find myself able to say her name. I could shout it out from my window at this very instant, but that would make me seem quite an irrational girl. The basic fact behind every rumour you've heard is true: once upon a time, Quinn Fabray and I were an item. But from there, everything spirals out into an endless web of lies that she has spun. No matter what story you've heard, as long as they came from her, I ended up being portrayed as the villian. Me. Harmless Rachel Barbra Berry. Why would anyone on Earth believe such a thing? Maybe I'm not quite as unaffected by the thought of her as I would like to make myself believe, because my fingers are shaking noticebly as I write this. But this must be done; I have to break through this barrier of emotion which bars me from gaining freedom. The purpose of this story is to tell what really happened when we were together- the truth. After all, the truth will set me free.

It began Janurary 9th, 2012- Junior year. The day was Monday, and the time was five p.m. I was sitting on my bed with my computer perched on my lap and one leg tucked neatly underneath me. Whenever the occasion presents itself, I utilize my computer's social networking capabilities. Bringing open my web browser, I went into a website named Tumblr. The name was humourous in my opinion, as if someone were sitting on top of a dryer whilst coming up with it. Quinn, one of my friends, had made me a Tumblr and insisted I used it. Something must have been in the bottles of Dasani I drank frequently, because an insane thought popped into my mind that day. 'You should ask Quinn out.' was the thought.

I found out Quinn played for both teams purely by way of precise timing. Sometime the previous month, she had "reblogged" - the terminology kills me - a post that said, "Every lesbian has heard 'All The Things She Said'." My first thought, even though I'm not a lesbian, was "Well, I haven't." My second thought was controlled by my fingers and the question was typed into her inbox. "You're straight, right?" As we all know by now, the answer wasn't what any of us expected.

Anywhom, I digress. After debating the pros and cons of actually going through with it, I began to type my proposal. Gathering up my confidence, I crafted the perfect message in a small paragraph and hit send.

I knew she was going to say no. And she did. "Sorry, but I can't." came her reply. It wasn't crushing or devastating, and it didn't hurt. I had forseen her answer. End of story, right? Wrong. I shrugged it off like a good sport and said "Well, okay. Let's pretend it never happened." After all, I wasn't her type. However, instead of reacting the same way I did and being willing to put that blunder behind us, she basically said that we could never be friends again. After a day or two of trying to save our friendship, I told her that I was going to stop talking to her, like she wanted. That was me from the start - always willing to make her happy. A few short days later, on Friday, January 13th (lucky, huh), she changed her mind. That's right, ladies and gentlemen- she came back to me. I know you've heard that I begged and pleaded and cried, but she was just a pretty girl- not worth throwing a temper tantrum over, in my opinion.

It was the end of the school day, and we must have been having testing or something because I was in Trigonometry at that time which I usually have earlier in the day. My phone vibrated with a text from her. I had deleted her contact information so I wouldn't be tempted to send her a message, but I still remembered the number. I ignored it. A minute later, another one came. I figured she would be relentless and I opened the messages.

"Can we talk?" the first one said. "Please?" read the second one. Ha! What a funny girl. "Funny Girl"- see what I did there? I turned off my phone and stowed it in the depths of my backpack. I promptly plugged myself into my iPod and my thoughts were clouded by music for the drive home. My mother, Shelby, apparently had no idea that I was going through a tough time, because when I climbed into the car she merely smiled at me and drove off. Isn't it funny, in a sad way, how the people who could help us the most never know we need help unless we tell them? And we won't tell them either because we're big, strong teenagers and can handle anything life throws our way.

When I got home and checked my messages, I had quite a lot. And they were all from her. After the pleading texts, she sent several reminding me to do homework. If only you could have seen my face then. But her last message said,

"Puck's noticed that we haven't been talking as much."

To that I replied, "Well the silence between us must have been caused by you believing that I was hurt by your response, even though, I assured you, I was not."

She began to sing a different tune, because eventually she told me "Maybe it's temporary insanity - kidding - but I'm saying yes." Whether it was because she realized that she had a perfectly fresh victim on her hands or because she actually felt something for me, I'll never know.


	2. Never Say Never

Chapter 2: Never Say Never

Our relationship technically only lasted for a month and three days. But we courted and talked to each other for months after the break-up. During the time we were actually together, we spent our time buying each other gifts, talking from morning to night, attempting to be subtle and secretive at school, going on one actual date.

A few days after we began to date, we decided to go on that famous first date. To make it less awkward and suspicious, we brought along my best friend: Tina Cohen-Chang.

Quinn, if you're reading this, there's no way you can deny what happened. Tina was there. Before Quinn and I began dating, I could only assume when she began to like me. In October, during McKinley's Homecoming week, there was a designated "twin day". Quinn had asked me to be her twin, and it didn't occur to me that she had wanted to go shopping and hang out alone with me, so I invited Tina to be our triplet. In the pictures taken of that day, she had always positioned herself next to me, and I always wondered if she resented having to "share" me with Tina.

Anyway, he three of us went to a movie theater an hour before the movie began. After our guardians left, we walked over to Coldstone and got vanilla shakes. We went over to Gamestop after that and began looking through games. Surprisingly enough, both Tina and Quinn bonded over the violent games and both gave me a frightening, deadly glare when I told them it would probably be best for me to never be alone with either of them. The cashier, the only other person in the store, seemed bemused.

After that, we hung out in the parking lot of the movie theatre before finally going into the arcade room. This was where I won the first present I gave Quinn. I headed straight for the claw machine, ignoring both Tina and Quinn's statements of how people never won anything from them. The last time I had used this machine, I was 10, but part of being Rachel Barbra Berry is having ultimate confidence. As the game began and lights illuminated the display, I glanced back at the two and they fell quiet. Seven seconds later, I retrieved the stuffed pink unicorn and wordlessley handed it to Quinn.

Do you still have it, Quinn? Do you still have that unicorn which you named after me? Did you refuse to throw it away in the hopes that as long as it stayed alive, so would the chance of our light being rekindled?

After a while, it came time to enter the theatre. I should probably state here that we were underaged teenagers attempting to see the new Underworld movie. My plan was to purchase tickets for a PG movie - The Iron Lady - and instead sneak into Underworld- devious, I'm aware. Neither of them listened to me. Instead, the ticket collecter - pardon me, sir, but I'm not sure what your official name is - halted us and asked for some ID. Trying to refrain from shouting "You should listen to me", I watched as Quinn pulled out her sister's ID - one that claimed she was 24 rather than 16 - and managed to trick the man into letting us in.

I still believe he knew she was lying.

I could tell you about the movie, but I could assume that a only miniscule percentage care that the previews were longer than the actual movie, how two men a ways off from us were singing during it, and about my botched attempts at holding Quinn's hand. Her hand was cold, like mine, which struck me as a funny work of fate. My body ran on a different temperature than most people. For some reason, it was always cooler than everyone else's. Quinn was the only person I'd met who had the same temperature. After that night, however, I never actually held her hand again.

Quinn, I regret nothing.

Between the idealistic and fairytale - however atypical - bouts of high school romance, we had quite a lot of problems. From my viewpoint, we acted like a married couple. She was the man in the relationship who needed control and ambled around in a wife-beater while I acted as the housewife who made lunch and obeyed every command. People told me I was whipped even if they didn't know to whom I was whipped; I wasn't, I just couldn't risk upsetting her. Slushie facials weren't the invasive only methods she used on me. On occasion, it got physical. I actually did make her lunch a few times, all involving bacon- even though I'm Jewish and vegan. Oh, I tried to subtly replace the offending meat with turkey bacon, and oft times a meat substitute, but she was able to taste that there was a difference, and did not enjoy being decieved.

Due to her obsession with reading fantasical fiction, she not only believed that we had to be the perfect couple, but that she should wear the hypothetical pants in the relationship. She came up with nicknames for us- she was "Lion Quinn" and I was "Jewfasa". The first point where she voiced control over what I did occured after an incident at a little party. Our friends threw a small picnic at school in celebration of two birthdays. Everyone was having a good time. And even though she had sat on a different side than I was, I was having fun too. Incidentally, I laid my head in my friends lap for a little bit while we laughed with the people on my side of the party.

After a while, I began to take pictures and figured that it would be harmless to take some of my girlfriend. I went over to her and tried tickling her to get her to smile (later I learned that tickling her is actually a turn-on for her...your mind just went places, didn't it?) but she pretty much ignored me after I snapped a few, even moving away whenever I got near her. I couldn't understand what was causing her to have yet another mood swing, so I chose to ignore it for the rest of the day.

I was on my way home when I recieved a text from her that read: "I'm about to take a nap but I wanted you to know, you laying on Sugar's lap was so not cool." Granted, I knew that she would be upste even though Sugar is straight, but I had no idea she would be so pissed. In the end, I wasn't allowed to hang out with Sugar.

Quinn, you should know, I always found a way around your rules.


End file.
